Wall Street Bonuses and the NASA Budget

What, you may ask, do Wall Street bonuses have to do with the NASA budget?  Bear with me for a moment. By now most of us have heard about the tone-deaf avarice of executives at AIG, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup etc. etc. taking huge amounts of “stimulus” money from the taxpayers and then spending millions on luxury trips, private jets, ostentatious decorations, and bonuses.  The only surprise here is that the angry mobs with torches and pitchforks haven’t materialized…yet.

Now, it is common these days whenever the subject of NASA and space exploration comes up for people (sad to say, including many Liberals with whom I agree on the vast majority of issues) to say things like, “Who cares about space? We should be spending that money here on Earth.”  Well, that is just wrong on so many levels.  NASA and the U.S. space program has been the source of so much benefit, from the mundane to the existential to the simply practical, that it’s hard to list all the ways.  Yes, it costs a lot of money.  That’s why the government has to do it.  But wait…

How much does it really cost, in context? That’s the point I’m working toward here.

According to the New York Times, Wall Street firms paid out an estimated $18.4 Billion in bonuses in 2008.  That’s right, the geniuses who are largely responsible for the worldwide financial crisis got $18.4 Billion last year in addition to their already obscene salaries and benefits.  Now, for comparison, the proposed 2009 budget for NASA is $17.6 Billion.  Let that sink in for a moment.

All the money for the space shuttle program, the Mars program, the various planetary and Earth-sciences missions, the salaries for the engineers, astronauts and support personnel — ALL of it — is substantially less than the bonuses paid to a handful of investment bankers on Wall Street.
So what’s my point? Aside from the unrestrained soulless greed and possible criminal activity of these neo-robber barons, the real benefits we get from NASA and the space program are a bargain.  Yes, we have critical problems that are having a devastating effect on people’s lives and demand immediate attention and lots of money.  It’s is simply wrong-headed to use NASA as a scapegoat for money not being spent where it is needed.  The real goats are wearing Armani suits and jetting between their mansions.